Tuesday, July 30, 2013

During Toronto’s torturous heat wave this July, with temperatures soaring to some 40 degrees Celsius (that’s 110 degrees Farenheit), activists from Toronto Pig Save have mobilized to give water and watermelon to severely overheated pigs on their way to slaughter. The gesture is the last— and, likely, the first— act of kindness that the pigs will ever know. When the sweltering trucks transporting the animals to Quality Meat Packers pause at a stoplight just outside the slaughterhouse, volunteers slip watermelon through ventilation holes in the trucks, and pour water into the mouths of as many frantic pigs as they can reach. It’s not enough. It’s never enough.

But just being there is important to these activists. It’s part of the larger project of bearing witness that is at the heart of Toronto Pig Save.... It’s also a refusal to turn away from the needless violence and death inflicted on animals exploited for food....